Industry continues to innovate with respect to self-service devices. Increasingly, enterprises are reducing expenditures and deploying automated Self-Service Terminals (SST) where consumers can purchase their own goods and services without any attending personnel. The examples of such SSTs are endless including: Automated Teller Machines (ATMs), video rentals, electronic devices, gas pumps, soda/coffee/snack dispensers, grocery checkouts, lottery ticket dispensers, airline check-ins, hotel check-ins, rental car check-ins, gaming devices, and others.
Many of these SSTs may not be connected to any communication network (such as a snack vending machine) whereas others of these SSTs may be connected to a protected network (such as an ATM) without access to any other available communication network. In still other cases, some SSTs may be connected to a local private network with little to no capability to connect to outside resources. Yet, these SSTs still are electromechanical devices that can and do fail and that can and do require service from time to time from an engineer or a technician.
Service calls by engineers are inherently inefficient. Some enterprises may keep a log book that a visiting engineer can refer to, assuming that previous engineers had the foresight to record their previous visits (which is not always likely). Moreover, attempting to review service information on a small handheld device of a visiting engineer is often cumbersome and inefficient; as a result, newly trained engineers often find themselves on the phone with remote support more frequently than is likely necessary.
Furthermore, it is not just service that may require a physical visit by an engineer to a SST. For example, an enterprise may want to audit software licenses resident on the SST for compliance. This may be done due to government regulation, due to license renewals, and/or other standard auditing practices of an enterprise. Currently, license auditing is inefficient and fraught with errors as well.